


we could be free

by burlesquecomposer



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: FBI Agent Stiles Stilinski, Gen, Nogitsune, Nogitsune Effects, Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Nogitsune Trauma, Post-Canon, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 08:41:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10716027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burlesquecomposer/pseuds/burlesquecomposer
Summary: Stiles, just after completing his FBI training, finds himself in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. He'll do anything to get across the country back to Beacon Hills, but a shadow follows wherever he goes.





	we could be free

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wolfinglet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfinglet/gifts).



> Commission for James, who asked for voiles zombie apocalypse.
> 
> Title from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wOUbN0-COE), which I like a lot and sounds very fitting.

Sometimes, when it’s too quiet, the surrounding tepid, rot-thick air floods into the ears like cotton, a muffled pillow-y sensation enveloping the brain until the head feels light and heavy at the same time. But Stiles’ eyes still work, better the more he blinks out the haze and dirt, and so he trudges on. He’s lucky he managed to pilfer a pair of steel-toed combat boots off the legs of a SWAT officer, luckier that the shoes fit—his old Converse, once thought to be reliable, seem paper-thin in comparison, in memory. In a way, taking the boots, he felt like Dorothy stealing the ruby-red slippers off the Wicked Witch of the East, crushed under the farm girl’s house and known only for striped stockings and glittery heels. If only he had the luxury of feeling so righteous; if only Glinda the Good Witch weren’t dressed in his own clothes. The Converse died days since, peeling off his feet like worn, burned skin; “We’re Off To See The Wizard” was stuck in his head for another week.

The silence, every so often, could mean they’re being followed. Mostly, though, Stiles embraces the sound of soundlessness aside from the rhythmic scrape of soles on concrete and asphalt. It’s a brief reprieve from the nagging voice that follows him everywhere he goes. It starts up again every few minutes—and despite the fact that it’s his own voice, he wants nothing more than to be rid of it.

“When are we stopping?”

Stiles takes a long, hard, deep breath through his mouth. “We took a break two hours ago. We can keep going.”

“But aren’t you exhausted?”

“Just one more mile, until we get off the highway.”

“If I go down, Stiles, you all go with me.”

Stiles summons up the mental strength to turn around. Behind him slumps a dead middle-aged woman with a broken clavicle. Sickly and pale-grey yet alert, dark under-eye circles only emphasizing the white in the sclera, Void’s lips are red only on the inside; the white outer edges crack and split blood-scabbed beyond repair. It smirks, parting the wound wider until it shines.

Not like chapstick is a concern after everything else has gone to shit.

Not like Stiles cares, one way or the other.

“Rest, Stiles,” Scott says. He stands at Void’s side—traitor—the apocalypse having done nothing to dull the sweet puppy eyes Stiles can never resist. Stiles’ gaze flickers to his best friend, once, and then he stares at the rubble and glass under his boots.

“Fine,” he says. “Ten minutes.”

 

•••

 

They hop from vehicle to vehicle, siphoning gas into two jerry cans for fueling long stretches of Route 50 and walking whenever the tires go out, the combustion chamber fails, or, as Void advises, whenever they need to lose a tail and scatter their scent—a common occurrence. They stop through ghost towns to search homes and grocery stores for un-raided food and sleep in them, keeping watch in turns. Every once in a while, they find another car with a bit of life left, but it’s always risky to start up the engine in case the noise attracts—

“Mmnnn,” Void complains, “don’t call them zombies.”

“For God’s sake,” Stiles says, “they’re straight out of every movie about the undead there is.” He grips the steering wheel, rubbing the grains out of his fingers. “And I should know, I’ve seen them all. You know, everything we faced in Beacon Hills, it took some lore and threw the rest out the window, but this, this… classic Hollywood. So?”

Scott shrugs in the front seat. “I didn’t watch a lot of those movies.”

Stiles groans.

“Technically, I myself am a zo—”

Stiles sneers and tests the engine to drown out Void, who sits in the middle seat behind him and puts its scuffed, thinning Oxfords up on the center console. The station wagon stutters to a slow start, coughing and rumbling like it has tuberculosis, and it shakes under them as Stiles begins to peel off the curb where it’s been abandoned. There we go, baby. Roscoe 9.0.

“As I was saying—”

Stiles shoves his tongue into his cheek, stares only at the road.

“—I _am_ undead. I’m using this body—”

“It’s a loan. It probably belonged to a nice guy, a businessman, probably with kids, you’re _not_ keeping it—”

“—which, if that’s not undead enough for you, is missing an arm due to your carelessness only yesterday.”

Stiles shakes his head, accidentally glancing once in the rearview mirror. “Didn’t care the first time, didn’t care the second time. We’ll…” He hates saying it. “We’ll find you a new body if it matters that much to you.”

Void grumbles. “A lot of good that did, all that… ‘FBI training.’”

“You did a _lot_ of good, Stiles,” Scott says, quiet, earnest. “And that training is keeping us alive right now.”

Void kicks its slacks-draped legs up to the car ceiling, then swings to stretch itself out across the expanse of the backseat. “What for?”

“Don’t—” Stiles wrinkles his nose. “Eugh, don’t get your blood on the—dude, gross.”

“I will remind you, Stiles,” Void hums with a voice sharpened by a rusty knife, “that this gross body hosts the one that’s going to save you all, if you play along. Or maybe you could just give up.” It smirks. “Join me, Stiles. Doesn’t hurt.”

“Just keep driving,” Scott says, softer, like he’s behind his eyes. “Tune him out. Keep driving. Get to Beacon Hills, find the others.”

Stiles nods, and it’s that tether to Scott, thin but everlasting, that keeps him grounded in the reality they live in, just barely. He’s never been particularly religious, never understood the concept of faith, of praying to something that might not even be there, but he knows there’s plenty possible in the realm of the supernatural—including, apparently, Void’s knowledge of all things undead, kept tight-lipped until they ensure the nogitsune’s safety. But Stiles can’t let himself get tangled up in the intangibility of hope. He has to find them food, water, and shelter. Whichever comes first. And then, if anything is still out there, civilization. Family or friends, perhaps, if God’s really out there.

And then _they_ can get Void to talk.

And after that? Stiles would be happy to watch Void die a second time, collapse in a plume of smoke and dust while Stiles crushes the firefly between his fingers until the light flickers out, but that’s just one vote. Scott might tie it, merciful True Alpha that he is.

“The sooner we can find other survivors, the sooner I can get rid of you,” Stiles mutters to the zombie in the backseat.

Void hums a rough tune. That same _Wizard of Oz_ tune, the one that now pops a vein in the temples, gives Stiles a rushing headache. “I will _always_ be with you, Stiles.”

He hefts his duffle bag out of Scott’s lap, unceremoniously chucks it into the back, and tells Void to do another ammo count.

 

•••

 

He’d been cornered.

Drugged up on hopelessness, Doubt tempted Stiles— _you can’t save everyone_ ; but when sobriety sank him back into the cold earth, he heard Scott in his head— _we have to try_. And so he did. He tried.

But Stiles, cursed from birth to remember everything, sees that trainee’s hand slipping out of his grip whenever he closes his eyes to attempt sleep. Clammy, warm, then gone. The zombies clamored in like pigeons to scattered crumbs. Stiles scrambled to keep running but found himself separated from his fellow agents and the civilians he’d hoped to keep safe. His radio? Missing in the scuffle. His cell phone? Dead, like everything else.

Had he run off to divert the zombies? To look for more survivors? To save his own skin? That, of course, he’d been allowed to forget.

Even so, he booked it through the streets as a dozen or so picked up speed, fanned out, on the hunt. And when they had him flush up against the brick wall of a corner store, his pistol empty and pocketknives too short for a long-range fight, the last few undead didn’t wait for him to pick out a makeshift weapon. Stiles reached into his duffle bag anyway, desperate, and closed his hands around cool, smooth wood. He threw the jar and shut his eyes.

The zombie before him, the very same trainee Stiles had lost, stuttered and glitched like an old animatronic. Its neck snapped and rolled, and its spine unfurled from its crouch until it could lean its body back, tilt its face for a lingering second to the cloudy sky with a breath. Then, wrecked and blood-smeared, it took out its fellows at either side of it, tossing them like dolls, twisting off heads, until it stood over the bodies and clapped the dust and death off its hands.

“I missed you too, Stiles,” it said, slow and satisfied.

 

•••

 

Judging by the road map they found in the glove compartment of a dying Chevy, they should be crossing out of Utah and into Nevada. It’s grown harder now to find abandoned cars and the jerry cans sway heavily in their hands when they walk, grooves printed hard into their palms. The more they stick to Route 50, the harder it is to find adequate shelter for the night when rest stops are stretched dangerously far apart.

Stiles and Scott take turns driving. Or maybe Void drove sometimes—Stiles can never quite remember when he grows too exhausted to climb into the passenger’s seat after several hours fading on white line fever and days of walking and fighting. The expanse before them is massive and endless; a funnel of dusty desert road tapers off into the impossible distance. It’s stiflingly hot, but the A/C stopped working hours ago.

Stiles glances out the window every so often to watch the occasional zombie aimlessly wander in the fields or shuffle up a hill. It’s hypnotic, like counting sheep.

Nodding off, he’s suddenly jerked forward, cursing as his forehead slams into the console. “That’s it, Scott’s driving next,” he snaps at Void, who grips the wheel tight.

“Gas.”

“What?”

“ _Gas,_ ” Void says slowly. “We are out of gas.”

“We have more,” Scott says.

Stiles begins unbuckling his seatbelt. “Yeah, more in the back.”

“And how will we get to it?” Void says. With a mangled finger, wrist bone exposed, it points through the windshield to the handful of undead stumbling curiously toward them.

They’ve been spotted, and the next rest stop isn’t for another eight miles.

“I’ll take care of it,” Stiles sighs. “Stay here.” He drags himself out of the car and kicks the door open while grabbing a handful from the duffle bag. Two pistols; that’ll have to do.

Where Stiles had once felt his heart plummet into his stomach at the mere sight of them near, he’s now grown accustomed to them. In a strange way, he’s reminded of werewolves; many of them travel in herds, in packs, sometimes with a mild “leader” communicating with the rest of the group; other times, lone zombies amble along on their own, but they don’t last without friends, getting picked up into another pack or used as a light snack.

He’ll have a few moments to find the leader and avoid it for half the battle, ensuring they keep to their ordered groups instead of scattering unpredictably. As soon as his shoes touch the ground, they’ve noticed him, and the charge begins. Stiles aims for the heads and necks; he won’t get anywhere taking out one at a time, so he fires a series. Coagulated blood spurts from their rotting flesh, brittle bones splinter upon impact, an eyeball explodes in the socket and joins the brain exposed under a broken skull, shining in the overbearing sunlight.

The zombies gnash what’s left of their teeth, scream with sickening fury, and stumble into half-runs after each shot while Stiles breathes into his shoulder to escape the smell. Impede one, the next, the next, the next, until the first regains movement. _Like playing whack-a-mole_ , he thinks, remembers nights at the arcade after school with Scott when his dad got too busy, too old and tired to take him.

_“Stiles!”_

Stiles pauses, chancing a glance about their surroundings.

“Dad?”

A piercing screech. He quickly takes out the zombie before him that now crumples at his feet. Stiles keeps his gaze traveling. “Dad? Dad!”

“Stiles, there’s no one else out here,” he hears Scott say in the backseat. Scott’s emerging from the other side of the car, and Stiles hears, too, the slosh of the jerry can. Stiles fires off a couple more shots, half-blind.

“Scott, stay in the car!”

“I can do it fast!”

“Get back in the—Jesus, Scott.” Stiles has to work faster. But he’s so tired.

_“Stiles!”_

He barely hears it over the next gunshot blast that fells the zombie at his three o’clock. His brow twists. “Malia?”

His name rings out in the desert. _“Stiles!”_ Malia, the sharp of her blue gaze and her teeth, Kira and the glint of her sword, the waft of her flame. _“Stiles!”_ Derek. He should have looked for Derek, but with communications down he’d had no way to search for him, and wandering with no direction in a violent wasteland would have been the worst idea. Stiles registers the loud clumsy clatter of the nozzle against the gas cap. _“Stiles!”_ He can’t spare a look. The hot car presses against his back now and the sun beats down on his forehead. He squints through the harsh light, picks out the next one to shoot with the last bullet in his clip.

He fires, and the whole group shrieks.

He’s shot the leader.

Lydia’s banshee scream joins them all.

“Scott, we have to go!” Stiles blinks the sweat out of his eyes and trips around the trunk for the other side of the car, scrambles to get the second pistol out. He slides the clip out of the magazine to check how much he has—

Nothing.

_Empty._

“Scott!” Stiles shouts. “Scott, get the bag!”

The back door is open. Scott is nowhere to be found. The jerry can sits on its side and gasoline pours freely out of it, spilling and spreading in a pool under the car. Stiles blinks, and he sees himself getting out of the driver’s side—his younger self, in his late teens, pale and mostly dead, a familiar hole ripped wide in the stomach of his shirt. Stiles’ breath tears out of him, and then a hand seizes his upper arm from behind and drags him back. The gunfire has attracted more of them.

“Void, what did you do?” Stiles wrestles out of the zombie’s grip, but another claims him. “Void!”

Void steps his Converse through the gasoline pond. He raises his hand, and with some sort of unspoken command, the zombies take Stiles’ body and hold him still.

Stiles stammers himself through several questions, finally landing on, “Where’s Scott, what did you do with him?” and Void’s brows rise softly, the whispers of a smile on his cracked lips.

“Scott?” he says, a hint of disgust and a tiny roll of his eyes. “The alpha? He’s in California—if he’s still alive, that is. He was never here.”

_“Stiles!”_

Scott calls out for him, but his voice sounds distant. _He was never here._ Like his dad, Malia, Derek, Lydia.

“I miss my Oni,” Void says, almost heartfelt. “But these… for now, they’ll do.”

Stiles shudders with a half-sob, and Void steps closer.

“You _really_ thought I was going to help your miserable species,” Void says. He looks Stiles over with a wide, alive, alert gaze, almost as if he’s fond of him. “Well, you were stronger than I thought you’d be, but I tired you out soon enough. Your spirit, though—that was much harder to break.”

Stiles attempts to twist out of the zombies’ hold, but he’s in a literal death grip, and he can only manage to kick his boots weakly in protest.

“See, I can soak up the last bits of life from the dead,” Void says. “Get stronger bit by bit. But having a living, breathing, strong human body, all mine… I really do miss it.”

“You can’t have me—”

“But aren’t you exhausted?”

Stiles has to fight to keep his head from rolling. The sun burns. He can’t move. He can’t hear his name anymore, called out across the sand and dirt and rolling hills. He catches glimpse of a dust cloud down the road, wonders if it’s someone coming, wonders if it’s all in his head like everything else. He licks his lips, but they stay dry. “No,” he says anyway.

“I have a riddle for you.”

Stiles shudders, breathes through his nose. The cold smell of rotting flesh around him keeps him awake. His hand twitches. He still has a pocketknife in his jeans.

“I am more powerful than God,” Void hisses. “I am more evil than the Devil. The poor have me, and the rich need me. But if you eat me, you’ll die.” His lip quirks. “What am I?”

Stiles blinks hard, tries to think, tries to reach for his pocket. A zombie rips him back like it wants to eat him, and he sobs, heart jackhammering. “I-I don’t know.”

“Come on, Stiles. _Think_.” Void recites the riddle again. “If you eat me, you’ll die. What am I?”

His fingertips brush the edge of his pocket.

“I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

“Get it over with and tell me.”

Stiles shuts his eyes tight and closes his hand around the cool knife.

Void smirks and says, “Nothing.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was a lot of fun to write—I missed Stiles and Void! Thanks for the commission, James!! <3


End file.
